Human Side of Construction

Anthony Foley went from National Guard infantryman to master electrician to owner of his own veteran-owned shop, and he volunteered five years as an apprenticeship instructor along the way. In this conversation he is unusually honest about what large-scale construction does to people over time, including himself.We get into the day there was no drinking water on a hot job site and what that silence communicated, the leadership test he gives every apprentice, why he believes teaching is the highest form of mastery, and the moment a former student told him over lunch that he still seemed bitter. He agreed.Key topics covered• Why a foundation in standards made the transition from the military to construction easier, and where that turns into rigidity• The jump from a small shop to a national contractor, and the day he had to admit he might just be a number• Getting thrown onto large-scale new construction with no mentorship and being told to ask as few questions as possible• The water story, and what leadership communicates when it brushes something small off• Take the money off the table: his test for whether a leader is worth following• Why he gave five years of his own time to teaching apprentices for free• Teaching as the way men in this trade actually show they care• Phones, gambling and what he reads as a hope problem in younger apprentices• The gap between the six figure trades marketing and a first year apprentice’s actual paycheque• The superintendent who kept working through heat stroke, and what that models for everyone watching• How harshness gets inherited from one generation of tradespeople to the next• Why he thinks building steadier men is the precondition for the diversity the industry says it wants• Becoming the thing you were trying to avoid, and catching it in yourself• What construction could learn from law enforcement about peer support and stress• What he would tell an eighteen year old, and the one reason for joining the trades he will not acceptGuestAnthony Foley, owner and master electrician, AKF Energy Electrical, Dumfries, Virginia. Former National Guard infantryman. Five years as a volunteer apprenticeship instructor.Mentioned in this episode• AKF Energy Electrical: akfenergy.com• Anthony Foley: [email protected]• Kennesaw State University (where Anthony studied graphic design before enlisting)• Lightcast, Defining the Skilled Trades: A Data-Driven Blueprint for the Future, August 25, 2026 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humansideofconstruction.substack.com

A guy breaks his arm on your site and ninety seconds later three people are moving, there is a form, and there is an incident review by Thursday. A guy tells your foreman he has a plan to end his life, and nothing happens at all. In this solo episode, Angelo takes the mental health and crisis response program Shannon Truax-Wardell built at Preferred Materials, following the loss of a colleague to suicide, and turns it into a five-phase build sequence any construction company can follow. This is not an awareness episode. It is the operator manual: what you do, in what order, and what it costs you when you skip a step.Topics covered• Why mental health programs start with a trigger and a person, not a strategy, and why they die when handed to someone without authority• The ready-mix truck campaign, and the driver education that had to happen before it launched• Awareness without capability as an exposure, not a kindness• The eighty percent of your workforce who want to help and do not know how• Mental health first aid versus crisis response training, and why they are not interchangeable• Volunteer-based responder rosters, and why letting people quit is the system working• Why operational leaders, not HR, end up carrying the program• Roster composition, and who people in trouble actually approach• The legal line: no diagnosing, no treating, no prescribing, and why training is the protection• Why terminology matters: died by suicide, not committed suicide• Retention as the real return, and why promising an ROI number gets your program cancelled• Attention failure as an under-counted driver of site incidents• The one sentence from a leader that destroys the whole investment• What a site lead and an office lead can each do on Monday morningLinksEpisode 026 with Shannon Truax-WardellCrisis support: in Canada and the United States, call or text 988 at any time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humansideofconstruction.substack.com

Shannon Truax-Wardell led a program that put a suicide crisis line on the side of ready-mix drums and drove it through every community her company works in. It won a national award, and a stranger in crisis called the number and later called back to say thank you. In this episode, sponsored by Grand Valley Construction Association and Mark’s Commercial, she walks Angelo through what came after the campaign: crisis response and mental health first aid training built into an operating company since 2021, who volunteered and why, where the legal line sits, and what to say to the executive who wants the ROI first. Angelo shares the story of the manager who asked him the same question five days running until he broke down at his desk. The through line is simple. We train every crew in first aid for the body and almost none of them for the mind, and that is a training gap, not a values problem.Key topics covered• How the ready-mix drum crisis line campaign came together in January 2021, and why the drivers were trained before a single truck went out• Crisis response versus mental health first aid: what each one covers and how long each takes• Why operational leaders, not just safety and HR, are the right people to train• Keeping the program voluntary, and why some volunteers backing out was the right outcome• The legal line between offering a safe place to speak and treating someone• Language that matters: died by suicide, not committed suicide• The 80 percent in the middle who want to help and freeze because they do not know what to say• Why relating your own story back to someone in crisis can push them further away• Angelo on Tim Peters, five days of the same question, and what a relief valve feels like• Shannon on losing an hour of her drive while carrying her father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis• The operational case: supported people produce, and stressed people are a risk to themselves and the crew• Answering the ROI question, and Cal Beyer’s line that the human case is the business case• The Loyal Crew: where the name came from, the hard hat sticker, and check in on your crew https://theloyalcrew.justadd10.com/• What a leader can actually do on Monday morning, on site and in the office• Where mental health programs fall flat, and what associations could be doing insteadAbout the guestShannon Truax-Wardell, CRSP, is Vice President of Safety, Health and Environment at Preferred Materials, and the founder of The Loyal Crew. She started in construction in 2005 in mining and aggregates after a co-op term paving roads for the County of Simcoe, and studied environmental engineering technology. She led the award winning ready-mix drum suicide prevention campaign and built crisis response and mental health first aid training across her organization. She speaks on mental health and psychological safety in construction both on behalf of her company and independently.About the SponsorsThe Grand Valley Construction Association’s mission is Building Better Community. While their work is rooted in building the spaces and infrastructure that shape our communities, GVCA recognizes that nothing gets built without the people behind it. That’s why they’re committed to raising awareness, education and support around mental health and suicide prevention in construction, because building better community starts with taking care of the people who build it.Learn more at: https://www.gvca.org/Mark’s Commercial’s commitment to helping people get home safely extends beyond physical safety to mental health and well-being. That’s why they’re proud to support this podcast and the important conversations that help create safer, healthier workplaces. Because getting home safely means taking care of both body and mind.Check them out at: https://www.markscommercial.com/en-ca/If you are struggling, you are not the only one. In Canada and the US, call or text 988 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humansideofconstruction.substack.com

64% of US construction workers reported anxiety or depression in the last twelve months, up from 54% the year before. For Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, Angelo brings Josh Vitale of Project BUILT back to the show to talk about the part nobody has gotten to yet: what you actually do once you have admitted there is a problem.Josh explains why running six thousand people through crisis intervention training was not the answer, what the trainings gave him and what they never gave him, and how that pushed him into building things instead. Family retreats. Recharge rooms already in use in police and fire halls. Rebar, a free anonymous check-in app that keeps a worker’s data on their own phone.Underneath all of it is a single design principle: the intervention cannot stop when the time clock gets punched. This is a solutions episode, and it ends with a direct answer to the question a lot of wellness committees are sitting on right now, which is what to do with a budget you do not know how to spend.Key topics covered• Why awareness fatigue is real, and why awareness is still not finished• What crisis intervention training gives you, and the one thing it cannot give you• The 2025 stigma numbers, from both the worker and the executive side• Doing your own work first, and the hero complex that comes with this territory• Whole people, not workers: why interventions that stop at the gate do not hold• Building the family retreat, and the model it was borrowed from• Recharge rooms: what is in them, what they cost, and where the results come from• The cost objection, and the cost of inaction• Rebar, Level Check, and Compass: free tools for the worker and the spouse• Why peer credibility beats a credential in this industry• What Josh would do with a $250,000 wellness budgetGuest bioJosh Vitale is the founder of Project BUILT, a construction wellbeing nonprofit built on the idea that the intervention cannot stop when the time clock gets punched. Project BUILT runs all expenses paid family retreats for construction families, is bringing recharge rooms from police and fire stations onto job sites, and recently launched Rebar, a free anonymous check-in web app for workers and their spouses in English, Spanish and Arabic. Josh is a builder first. He has sat in dozens of suicide interventions, has been through his own recovery, and is now MasTec’s preferred charity partner. He first appeared on the show in Episode 7.Mentioned in this episode• Project BUILT and the all expenses paid family retreat in Pagosa Springs, applications open: https://getbuilt.org• Rebar, free and anonymous, English, Spanish and Arabic: https://rebar.getbuilt.org• Clayco / Atomik Research 2025 construction mental health survey, the study cited at 13:36• CAMH: one in two Canadians will have had a mental illness by the age of 40 (Smetanin et al. 2011)• Project Sanctuary, the military family retreat model Project BUILT was built from• QPR, Vital Cog and Mental Health First Aid, the training programs discussed• Ed DeAngelis, EDA Contractors, and the accountability program mentioned at 1:07:45 (HSOC Episode 9)• Confide, Project BUILT’s peer support partner• Josh Vitale’s first appearance, HSOC Episode 7SupportIf you are struggling, or worried about someone: call or text 988 in the US and Canada. In the US, 988lifeline.org. In Canada, 988.ca. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humansideofconstruction.substack.com

Roughly 34,000 superintendent seats sit empty in the US and 63 percent of construction CEOs report trouble finding field managers. The industry’s standard explanation is that the next generation does not want responsibility. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 tells a different story: manager engagement fell from 27 percent to 22 percent in a single year, the steepest drop of any group they measure, and leaders now report more stress, anger, sadness and loneliness than the people they lead. In this solo episode Angelo takes that data into the site trailer and makes the case that the field leadership shortage is a job design problem, not a character problem, and that your AI strategy dies or survives at the same trailer door.Key topics covered• Why the engagement premium of being a manager has disappeared, and why field leaders are ground zero• The superintendent’s day as the most pressurized seat on the org chart• Why team engagement is an operations metric, not an HR metric• Span of control: the cost of stretching one super across two jobs• The trailer door test and why AI investment stalls at the field leader layer• Pointing technology at administrative burden instead of at the boardroom• Four moves to redesign the field leadership job• The quarterly question that works as a leading indicator for turnover, adoption, safety and marginData referenced• Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026: global engagement 20 percent, manager engagement 22 percent (down from 27 percent), roughly 10 trillion dollars in lost productivity, 79 percent manager engagement in best practice organizations, 8.7x and 7.4x AI multipliers with manager support• NCCER and the Construction Industry Round Table: roughly 34,000 unfilled superintendent positions, 63 percent of CEOs reporting difficulty finding field managers• MIT research on enterprise AI returns, as cited inside the Gallup report This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humansideofconstruction.substack.com